Spain Dad, a baby blog

I sat on the couch with a pen in my hand. I was supposed to be editing my book proposal, but instead I was watching April stand on a Wii balance board. The balance board is an accessory for Nintendo’s Wii video game system, and it’s a white slab that looks like a household weight [...]

365.164 – Smile! by dyanna. I stood there with my arms crossed and stared at the goldfish that had sunk to the bottom of the fish tank, shipwrecked among the pebbles, and all silvery like a coin dropped in a well. I always thought goldfish floated to the top when they died. Maybe not right [...]

When I came home from work on Friday, April and Alleke were playing Memory in the middle of the living room floor. April turned over two cards, and Alleke quickly scrambled to her feet, pointed and shouted, “Same.” “What is this?” April asked, tapping her finger on the card. I walked over and took a [...]

I’ve always found it strange that April uses her socks to clean things. I’m not talking about old socks with holes in them that have been retired to the pile of rags. I’m talking about the ones she’s wearing right now. For example, I remember taking April to The Olive Garden when we had been [...]

Especially when April loves nothing more than to travel, and Amsterdam is one of her favorite cities on the planet, and I offered to keep Alleke at home with me while she was gone. The idea was to send April to Amsterdam for a weekend conference while Alleke and I stayed in Madrid. April often [...]

Our process of doing an international adoption in Spain came to a grinding halt last year when I found out I had lost my Spanish residency due to a miscommunication with one of the government agencies. However, as of two weeks ago, I am a legal resident in Spain once again, which is why tonight [...]

Last night we were watching TV before bed, and April had Alleke on her lap. The show we were watching seemed relatively harmless until one point when the main character’s skin melted off his face, and he turned into a talking meatball. I grimaced, and April put her hand over Alleke’s eyes. When the scene [...]

Watch Sad Face video…

Back in May while we were in Iowa, April got a phone call from an adoption agency asking if she would be willing to work for them as a Spanish translator while she was in town. April agreed, and within a few hours was sitting in the home of Vanesa, a Bolivian woman, who had [...]

April waited for the flight attendant to pass, then leaned across the aisle and tapped her finger in the middle of the magazine she had pulled from the seat in front of her. “Did you see this?” she asked. I looked at the page. It was a full-page ad for the Spanish Men’s and Women’s [...]